The Gillespie Country Fair

by Marc Hess

  Max followed the sheriff into his office and slammed the door deliberately behind them. Otto lowered himself into his chair on the far side of the desk. Then he let Max blow.

  “I could sue your goddamn ass for this.” Max, still standing, put his fists on the sheriff’s desk and leaned in. “And about that court order shit, way back when, that was all a bunch of bullshit your nephew put down. It was all a lie to run me off. And you goddamn know it.”

  “It’s Sunday, Max. Mind your language.”

  “You should have checked that out before you sent Lester out to embarrass me in front of my friends.”

  The sheriff nodded, his dispassion egging Max on.

  “If you hadn’t been so lazy, you would have checked it out and stopped it!”

  Otto waited for a pause in Max’s diatribe and spoke slowly. “No. I wouldn’t.” He made room for a thought. “See, Max, I’m just a simple lawman. It is in my blood to go busting down doors and kicking some ass.”

  Otto’s cool detachment had something of a calming effect on Max.

  “My problem is, kleiner Max, that I have been such an effective cop here for so long, I don’t often get to take advantage of the rare opportunities you present when you come back into town just asking for me to get into your business.” Otto pointed a hard finger at Max, then gestured for him to take a seat in the chair across the desk from him.

  Max obliged.

  With Max seated, Otto leaned back and spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “My blood nephew, your cousin—an upstanding, contributing citizen of this town—thinks you are some kind of pervert.” He let the words settle on Max. “A danger to his kid.”

  Max shot forward in his seat. “Well, he—”

  Otto held up his bear claw to quiet him. “Your turn to listen.” Max leaned back and let the sheriff continue. “Some time ago you earned yourself something of a reputation stalking Carel’s wife.”

  “There was no wife. They weren’t married.”

  Otto ignored him. “Now he has reason to believe that you’ve come back stalking after his daughter.” Max lurched forward to respond, but the sheriff blasted back at him. “And your behavior seems to be bearing out his view of things.”

  “I gave her a ride to pick up her mother’s truck.”

  “That is what I am talking about. It is that kind of behavior that makes you what we, in law enforcement, call a person of suspicion.”

  Otto’s words rolled over Max. “You know what’s going on here, Otto. It’s Carel. I am not doing anything—”

  “Don’t you concern yourself with him, kleiner Max,” the sheriff said. “Your cousin Carel has filed a complaint, and I am desperately looking to find grounds for action on my part. No, I haven’t found it. Yet.” Up came the bear claw again. “But I want to warn you, Max Ritzi, that we are going to be all over you.”

  Max didn’t flinch.

  “You had your little visit. You got drunk with your buddies, and my guess is that you’re planning to leave town right after the county fair.”

  There was a long, dry poker stare between them.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Otto.”

  “You’re not planning to stay too long, are you?”

  Max paused to allow the tension to abate. “My father is finally fading out. I need to be here for my mama when he’s gone. Both my sister and my little brother are … well, they’re not doing well with all this. And I have already had my full share of small-town bullies pushing me around. You’re just another one of them, Otto.”

  “That’s Sheriff Otto to you, son.”

  Max shook his head at that. “Well, Sheriff, I’m telling you I’m back home now.”

  Otto stared at him for a while. “Here’s your warning.” He held up that big hand of his and counted out on his fat fingers so that Max could make a list in his head.

  Index finger: “You avoid your cousin Carel. Don’t cross tracks with him.” Middle finger: “And don’t be upsetting his ex-wife either. If you get either one of them pissed off, then you’ll be in trouble with me.” Then, raising his voice on his ring finger: “And you stay away from that girl too.”

  Max held up his little finger. “Nothing on the pinkie, Sheriff?”

  Otto’s mouth grew tight. “You don’t let this come to any kind of disturbance. You back off when he comes at you. No fists, no weapons, no ugly words. You don’t even respond to him when he unleashes his foul mouth on you.”

  Max saw the setup: Carel had the law on his side. Inwardly, Max was seething, but he kept his cool, sarcastic demeanor to show Otto he would not be intimidated.

  “As long as you are in Gillespie County, I can choose to make your life miserable.”

  “I learned that in high school, Otto. It’s nice to see how some things around here never changed at all.” Without waiting to be excused, he stood up and left the office, slamming the door behind him.

  Evelyn was waiting, purse on her knees and a smile on her face, always happy to see her son.

  “Oh, Mama, I’m sorry to make you come out here this morning.”

  “Oh, it’s no bother, Max. It’s right on the way to church.”

  Max knew that wasn’t true. Out the door in the already hot morning, they could hear the church bells blocks away.

  “Oh, dear. We’ll miss the processional.”

  “You go on, Mama. I can walk home from here.”

  “Oh, no you won’t, kleiner Max. You will come along to church with me.” She ran her eyes up and down her son’s stained and wrinkled party clothes and back up to the old bruise on his forehead. “You are in dire need of forgiveness. And at the Zion Lutheran Church, we have an abundance of that.”

  • • •

  Sunday was always family day at the Ritzi house, the day that Jock had his kids over. That was a fortunate thing from Max’s perspective; with the ruckus of kids trampling the house, it would be easier for him to tiptoe around in the background. He’d come home with his mother after a long and agonizing church service. He’d washed up and fallen on the bed in his old room, exasperated and fatigued, but he’d been unable to nap.

  He didn’t come downstairs until late afternoon, when the house was full of the frisky screams and shouts of children being shooed out into the backyard. In the kitchen, the women were hard at work on the Sunday supper and not looking over their shoulders. No one was talking to each other, and everyone was avoiding eye contact. The tension inside that house was so thick, it could have been cut with a meat cleaver.

  Max moved cautiously out onto the back patio, assuming that his father was parked in his dark corner, sucking oxygen and chewing on his cigars. He was wrong. As soon as he stepped out the door, he fell into the old man’s line of fire.

  “There is nothin’, no amount a’ God-fearing fathering, could ever alter the sinful nature of my own son!”

  Ambushed. Someone had moved the old man out back, to the wicker rocker.

  “The disgrace is mine. Damn you. Damn you! Mein own, mein own, always the drunken boy down in the jailhouse.” He stood up easily, without remembering how frail he was, and stepped toward Max, raising his cane. “With all dis carousin’ about an’ alcohol and workin’ the good girls of this town into whores …” He raged, red-faced, veins pulsing in his neck, incoherent and off his meds.

  Jock, across the yard tossing a baseball with his sons, stopped and watched, as did his kids. Evelyn’s and Gerdie’s faces popped into the frame of the kitchen window.

  “I’m not in the mood. You go find yourself someone else to pick on.”

  Maximilian was stiff, and his son’s words never reached him. “I been wasting this whole life of mine in prayer, all to achieve redemption in your soul. Never mine. Hear, me? Your soul …”

  “You tend your own damn redemption, Papa. I’ll take care of mine. The ugliness in your life is not my fault.”

  The old man roared even louder. “I have searched. I have prayed. No way in hell to beat the sins out from my own son.” He was
spitting and dribbling on himself and stepping closer to Max, who didn’t budge. Gerdie was on her way with a dishtowel.

  “You!” Maximilian raised his cane and pointed at Max’s face. Gerdie stopped just behind Max, her eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “Sie sind mein größter Ausfall!” the old man roared.

  “You can wallow in your own hell. You just keep me out of it.” Max shoved the cane aside. “You keep Mama out of it, and my sister and brother, too. Don’t you lay your phony righteousness on any of us!”

  Maximilian’s aluminum cane dropped to the ground with a low ringing sound. Gerdie stepped forward as if to intervene, but no words came out of her mouth.

  Out in the yard a young voice taunted, “Aww. Uncle Max is gonna get his head cut in.” Jock threw a hand across his son’s mouth, but it was too late. All the boys were giggling loud enough for the two Maxes to hear.

  Maximilian turned to the lawn and yelled to them all. He walked upright and steadily toward them, full of spunk and bile. “I have a rod for each and every one of you sinners. A rod you’ll remember, by Gott im Himmel.” He stepped forward and took a wild swing with his left arm in the general direction of the boys in the yard.

  Staggering off balance, the old man bumped against an ornamental glass lantern that shattered on the patio floor. He started to tumble down after it, his hands set out to break the fall.

  Max reached out to catch his father. His hands grabbed the old man’s denim shirt and held him there in midair, slumped but not fallen. Everything froze in that moment, and a sinister silence fell: Gerdie, still with the dishtowel. Jock and his kids in a motionless freeze tag out on the lawn. Maximilian sagging in Max’s fists, gasping for air.

  Gerdie rushed in to encourage her father back to his chair. “Opa, I think you should …”

  Max left the ladies to fret over the opa and went back up to the room that was once his.

  After a while Gerdie came up to see him in the kids’ bedroom, staring at her brother and bottling her feelings as she always did, like a nurse with bad news. “Let’s just keep things calm, Max. He’s very upset right now.” She took a position with crossed arms as she watched her brother shove clothes into his duffel. “You’re right, you know. Our father can get ugly. And prone to outbursts.” Her chin quivered. “Some irrational outbursts.”

  Max mocked her innocence. “And he likes to gouge the eyes out of little kitties, but other than that—”

  “Stop that, Max! I’m surprised at you.”

  Max let out a loud breath. “My fight is not with you, Gerdie.”

  Gerdie’s words were insistent and direct. “You need to find your way into a balance with him.”

  “This is balance, Gerdie. I’ve lived my whole damn life trying to duck him. I’m not doing that anymore.”

  “I know. I know.” Gerdie stepped closer to him, the palms of her hands raised in concession. “We’re a family, Max. We must love each other.”

  “That’s just it, Gerdie. There will be no love in this family until he’s dead.” Max stopped his packing and sat on the bed. “You can choose to live with his abuse. I am choosing not to.”

  “You haven’t tried, Max. You ran away.”

  His sister’s words infuriated him. “I didn’t want to leave! I was run out.”

  She backed off. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”

  Max threw a handful of clothes onto the floor. “Do you really want your children living with him? Do you want them to grow up thinking that kind of behavior is okay? What kind of mother are you, Gerdie?”

  The ferocious look in Gerdie’s eyes scared him. “Don’t you …!” She stepped closer and held a finger right up in his face. “Don’t you ever tell me how to be a mother! Don’t you tell me how to raise a child!” Max braced himself for a slap in the face. But Gerdie dropped her finger and stepped away. “That is something you know nothing about.”

  Max watched his sister move toward the door, but she stopped and put a hand to her face.

  “Sure, it’s mostly his fault,” she murmured. “But it’s your relationship with him that keeps the whole family out of balance.”

  Max shook his head and went back to shoving gear into his duffel. “This family does a lot better when I’m out of the way. You all just bask in the old man’s sickness.”

  “We’re not a family if you’re not here, Max. And we’re not a family without opa.” She came back to the bed and paused before sitting down next to her brother. “You don’t pick your family. God does. And He does it for a reason.”

  “Don’t go all gospel on me, Gerdie.” He stood and closed the straps on his bag. “I’ve had enough goddamn lectures.”

  She hesitated, then struggled to speak calmly. “I went out in the world too, Max. Both my kids were born in San Antonio. It was so crowded all the time, and so lonely all the time. And the gangs … It was bad, Max. It was bad out there.” She paused. “We don’t have that here in Fredericksburg. Do you think it was easy leaving my husband? I left him and came back because I wanted my children to grow up in a real family, in a real town. Not some nuclear family in an anonymous apartment somewhere.”

  “Do you really think your kids are safe here?” Max watched his sister gasp at the offense.

  Rather than answer him, she stood to leave, but she turned back before reaching the door. “So your choice is to come back and be a burden to your father in his waning days.”

  Max crossed the room to his sister. “You are his burden, Gerdie. Not me. You are the ones keeping him sick. Treating him like he’s an invalid.” He saw how those words frightened her—the way that their father frightened all of them. He stepped back and tried to calm his tone. “He’s not an invalid, Gerdie. It’s the way he plays you. He’s a cruel old man. And you keep him that way.”

  Gerdie closed her eyes when she heard that, as if to keep her chin from quivering. When she spoke, it was slowly and with great effort. “I am trying to deal with you as a brother, Max. But I am angry with you. And right now, I wish that you had stayed in New Mexico.”

  Max’s shoulders dropped in despair. “I wasn’t in New Mexico. I was in Arizona.”

  “You weren’t here.” In one fluid motion she spun on her heels, left the room, and slammed the door hard behind her. That was another Ritzi trait, to slam doors and stomp off before things were settled.

  Outside, Max was embarrassed to find himself stranded, standing on the front porch with his laptop and his duffel bag. Trapped. Just like he was as a young kid without a driver’s license, unable to get far enough away. He hadn’t thought this through.

  He dialed a number on his cell phone and caught Aubrey at his house, watching the Rangers game with a few friends. Aubrey told Max that he was welcome to stay at the ranch, that he could help with some fencing that needed getting done. “Be down to get you right after the game, mein alter Freund.”

  Max was left sitting on the porch steps of the house he’d grown up in—no car, no way to get on the road.

  • • •

  Early the following week, after two hot days of pulling barbed wire at the Weshausens’ ranch, Max got a ride back into town so he could pick up his car. He had received a curt call from Jock, telling him his car was all fixed up and asking him to pick it up quickly, claiming that he needed space in his shop. At Ritzi Agricultural Equipment, Max found his Challenger coupe as fine as it was when it came off the assembly line. A perfect paint match. They had replaced the fenders and smoothed out the rocker panels; great old German craftsmanship executed with imported Mexican artistry.

  Max sought out his brother and approached him jovially. “This is great work, Jock. How the hell did you match that color? This is so good, I don’t know if I can afford this. Where’s the bill?”

  “No. No charge for you, bro-brother,” Jock addressed him stiffly. “You get the family rate.” He paused for a stutter that didn’t come. “Even if you don’t get it.”

  “What about parts? And the paint? You had to
cash out for parts, didn’t you?”

  “No charge, Max, but I need the bay, so you need to get it out of here. Like, right now.”

  Max looked around the shop. There was no bay—it was a large, open space with plenty of room for more vehicles.

  “One more thing. No warranty. Take it as is, and don’t bring it back.” Jock turned and crossed the shop, heading back toward his office.

  Max watched Jock’s back as he walked away. Even shunned, Max felt a pang of respect for his little brother. He’d never known Jock to take such a strong stand on anything.

  The Sin That Transcends Generations

  Race days were always dress-up days for Mr. and Mrs. Carel Geische. Carel pushed himself into the stiffest of his pressed Wranglers and pulled on his ostrich-skin Luccheses, while Cora Lynn matched up her red cowboy boots with a lightweight bandanna-red dress. A lipstick smile curled up from beneath her big sunglasses as she moved through the crowds at the Gillespie County Fairgrounds. This was the movie scene that Carel relished—striding into a gunfight, outnumbered and outgunned. Time for him to stand tall.

  “Now don’t you go talkin’ business an’ all,” Cora Lynn cautioned him as they climbed into the grandstands. “This is a social occasion. We’re just gettin’ to be friends with the new owners. Don’t you go spoilin’ that.”

  While seizing his accounts and rifling through his assets these Houston moneymen found that they now owned a box of reserved seats at the racetrack. The seats, parceled out to companies that made large donations to the Gillespie County Scholarship Fund, were simple enough: a clutch of metal folding chairs railed off on the second tier, overlooking the finish line. With unflinching determination, and with his charming wife at his side, Carel walked in as if he still owned them.

  Schrubb introduced him to the several auslanders who now owned Geische Land & Development: Real Estate with handshakes and insincere smiles all around. “Howard Vader, our senior director from Houston,” Schrubb mumbled.

  Trying to remain polite, Carel had to choke back his contempt for the Houston men in their polo shirts and golf pants and the ladies in their silly race-day hats.